Villafranca, Gorbachev, Dean, Truitt, and Johnson

Elizabeth Villafranca, whose family has a Mexican restaurant in Farmer's Branch, quoted in the Houston Chronicle on a new effort to regulate paint colors on houses there: "I believe controlling the color you paint your house is basically profiling the Hispanic community. We all know who paints their homes tropical colors."

Former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, asked at UT Pan American to compare the Berlin Wall with the barrier proposed on the U.S.-Mexico border, quoted by the Rio Grande Guardian: "Well, I cannot repeat what President Reagan once said, but take each historically: the Great Wall of China, or the Berlin Wall, and other walls. They have not been particularly effective; not particularly efficient."

Longview Mayor Jay Dean, talking to the Longview News-Journal after local official confronted their local state reps at a meeting: "One of the things we're trying to do is bring our region together to try and help these guys, these legislators, focus on what we consider our primary issues. When they're politically involved on opposite ends of issues or support of a speaker, that breeds ill feeling. The election of a speaker is tough-duty politics. I don't think it's easy to forget and forgive once a vote is taken, because that's how they play ball."

Rep. Vicki Truitt, R-Keller, on legislative politics: "This is a blood sport. If you don't like it, do something else."

Washington Supreme Court Justice James Johnson, in an opinion — quoted by The New York Times — knocking down a state law that made it illegal to lie about material facts in political campaigns there: "It naively assumes that the government is capable of correctly and consistently negotiating the thin line between fact and opinion in political speech."